How It Ends
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: They were McQuaids, and McQuids don't die. But they weren't really McQuaids, were they?


Hanson jerked at the sudden corner, his eyes flashing in fifty different directions. His gun was heavy between his broken fingers, and he wondered if he'd have to cut them off later on. He heard the sirens outside the charred old house, heard someone on the loud speaker telling the guy, or maybe even him, to get out of the house. The beams where blackened to barely solid ash, the floorboard groaned under his boots, and he knew the place would fall. He let himself imagine it, how it would go down in a big cloud of smoke, the black wood falling from it's bounds and mix with the fields of dirt. It would, of course, be Hanson's fault. He let his cover be blown like a fucking rookie, kid goes ballistic, burns down his parents house.

He was in his room, or what was left of it. Hanson didn't even need to kick the door open. The corners, the sides, where worn down to dull nubs of wood. The kid, Steve, huddled himself in a corner, his head drunkenly propped against the wall, his gun hung between two loose knuckles. The finger, he noticed, remained still on the trigger.

"Get out of here." was what he said, seeing Hanson at the doorway without much interest.

"Come on, Steve," said Hanson, "I'm getting you outta here."

"It's too late." he muttered. His eyes where glazed over. His wrist tensed as he clutched the gun tighter.

Hanson knew that, if this kid died, he wouldn't be able to handle it. He knew it.

"No it's not. We can work this out."

"You _ain't _gonna lock me up?"

Hanson didn't say anything.

Steve lifted the gun, more to look at it, then anything, turning it around in his fingers as though it were a trophy, "I ain't going to jail."

Hanson stepped foreward, "Steve..."

The boy shook his head, almost violently, "_No_!" he hissed, "I ain't going to no _goddamn _jail!"

Hanson grew desperate, feeling panic rush through his veins faster then adreneline ever could, fueling his every movement with a quick, hurried jerk, "_We'll work it out!"_

"No!" cried Steve. Faster then Hanson thought possible, a bullet flew past him, skidding his shoulder like a peice of paper, ripping the flannel shirt he wore over his white t-shirt. He hissed.

The floor shook under his weight.

"I can help you, man," Hanson reasoned, "but I gotta get you _out _of here."

Another misguided bullet hit the wall next to him, the wood around it melting away like sand. Hanson fingered his own gun, not sure what to do with it.

Aim to kill, he'd never live with himself. Could injure him then haul him downstairs in the next ten seconds, either. Not without both of them being buried along with the rest of the house.

He didn't have time to make a disision. Steve's gun, was all he saw, lifting to a bed of red hair. A finger snapping at the trigger. It falling to the blackened floorboards. The bed of hair following.

"No!" he choked. His walkie-talkie bizzed at his hip, over and over, _Hanson are you there? Hanson are you okay?_

He can't be here. He can't be okay.

The kid was fucking dead, because of him.

And Tom Hanson found himself wishing he were dead, too.

"_Fuck!_" he cried, shifting on his heels, his gaze plastered to the body. Like a car accident, he once heard Penhall say, you can't look away.

He should get out, said the sane part of his mind, the place is going to go any minute.

Maybe he should, he thought in response, maybe...

He found himself running down the stairs without really thinking, his gun still tight around his palm. Everything, everything, seemed to rain down on him as he went, like every step he took was the final flame, the deadly touch to rid everything in it's path. Maybe.

Something fell in front of him. It flickered, and he hardly noticed it was on fire as he rounded another corner. Where'd he come in?

Suddenly, without more then a screech of warning, he found himself crushed under something. Wood, fire, something. It pressed down against his back, shocking him from his daze, if only for a moment. Fire licked his skin, and he wondered if it had started again or if it just never stopped.

Pieces of wood fell around him. His eyes glazed over at the sight, staring at every charred remain of oak lining that rained down from the floor above.

His gun was still tight in his clenched fingers, the arm stretched in front of him, maybe so he could see the thing.

Yeah, he concluded, as the voices outside grew more and more frantic, I'm a goddamn idiot.

He drifted, wondering if they had coffee in hell.

--

They got out the fire, just in time for half the place to cave in on itself. To Doug, it wall all freeze frame, every image moving so slowly, he could point out every detail of every face of every police officer, paramedic, coroner.

The got the kid first, the Miller kid. He ate his gun, one guy said.

Hoffs was screaming into her walkie-talkie now, her voice cracking with over-use, shit like "Hanson, _say something_" even though they both knew it was useless.

This was why he wasn't surprised when they pulled out a second body, covering it so quickly no one had time to see it, which was probably their intention.

Doug, though, wanted to see it. For some reason, he knew he'd go around for the rest of his life wondering if he was dead or just on vacation somewhere.

This was why he pushed the medics aside and whipped the plastic tarp from his body. He looked at it like it was some kind of B movie, and it would be over in twenty minutes, and he'd go home and they would laugh at how stupid it was, maybe undercover.

But the sirens were real. The grave faces where real. The tears in their eyes where real. The blood, the burned skin. It was real.

He bit his lip and through the tarp back over the face, his breath becoming acid in his throat, burning his lungs.

He pushed past Hoffs, half her face covered by her hand, like she was afraid her mouth would fall off.

He thought of the McQuaid brothers for whatever reason. They didn't quit. They didn't get the skin burned off their face. They didn't die.

They were McQuaids, Doug repeated, they didn't die.

Captain was saying something to him that he didn't care about.

That's the problem, wasn't it?

They weren't McQuaids.

They where to two twenty something cops who looked sixteen that put their lives on the line for a bunch of ungrateful kids.

And this is how it ended. This is _why _it ended.

And, at that moment, Doug couldn't think of a stupider reason.

**Oneshot**

**I';m a tab obsessed with Johnny Depp at the moment. You have to excuse me, I only saw like three episodes of this show.**


End file.
